Category Archives: python

So many firsts last week — first time in Dallas, first time at the Computer Science Teachers Association conference, first time presenting at CSTA, first preso on Minecraft…. Lots of cool stuff to report!

My presentation was on Teaching Coding in the Middle School with Minecraft. You can see the preso in Google Presentation form right here. I have wanted to use the power of Minecraft as a bridge to learning coding for some time, so I spent this school year experimenting with different approaches. My preso is a summation of those, with the proviso that I had some very specific goals in mind, which would probably be different from yours. So YMMV, etc. Spoiler alert: I finally settled on the approach used in Adventures in Minecraft book by Martin O’Hanlon and David Whale. It uses Python, and it seemed to work great with my classes.

My Twitter feed blew up the night before, as word got out about my preso. Got to say it was very cool to get all that support, especially from the aforementioned Martin(@martinohanlon) and David(@whaleygeek). The actual preso was well attended and it seemed to fill a need, as most people were aware of Minecraft and were interested in seeing what they could do with it in their classes. Keep in mind that this was a CS teachers’ conference, so we were looking at that very narrow strip of MC usage.

I got an invitation at the end of my session to present a pre-conference on Minecraft next summer in Denver at ISTE. Cool!

So what I enjoyed about my first CSTA:

being at nerd central — coding, cool machines, cool apps, and

cool people! Special shoutout to Dr Sarah Guthals(@sarahguthals) from LearntoMod who has a great product and is an awesome fellow traveler on this coding in Minecraft journey

meeting some people I only knew from reading them, like Alfred Thompson(@alfredtwo) and Mark Guzdial, and Laura Blankenship(@lblanken)

So what’s next? Definitely a determination to learn more Minecraft — modding, servers, coding cool stuff in Python…. and a determination to connect with other educators doing this or interested in doing it. Would also love to connect with some modders and learn more about that…. got to finish my Digital Youth course on learning to mod in Java, follow up on LearntoMod’s growing product, learn some more javascript…. oh, and get ready for school… learn more GameMaker, App Inventor, Small Basic…. got to go!

I’ve spent a good part of this quarter in my 8th grade classes trying out some ways to code in Minecraft, as you know if you’ve been following this blog. See below for various attempts and approaches. I’ve looked at command blocks, LearntoMod, ComputerCraft (using Lua), ScriptCraft (using Javascript), Youth Digital’s Modding in Minecraft (using Java(!))…. They’ve all got features to recommend them, and I’m sure any of them would be awesome in the right situation. I’m not making any blanket thumbs-ups or thumbs-downs.

But here’s what worked best in my class —- something I got from the book Adventures in Minecraft by Martin O’Hanlon and David Whale. It’s an amalgam of Python, Minecraft, the Bukkit server, and Raspberry Pi. This odd little mutt suited my purposes really well. I call it Mython.

Technical details — you can get a folder with everything you need here, which includes the Bukkit server and the Minecraft/Python API. You’ll need to run Python 2.x (so far), Minecraft 1.6.4, and the current version of Bukkit. Others have ported it to other servers (Forge and CanaryMod), Python 3.x, and more recent versions of Minecraft. I just wanted something that would run with minimal hacking on my part, as time was running out in the quarter.

I had to do some monkeying around with accounts and permissions on my lab computers, and the results required more logins than I was happy with, but that can be fixed for next year. The important thing is that I was able to achieve my goal of introducing a text-based programming environment that was accessible to my 8th graders and did some fun and cool stuff in Minecraft. Mission accomplished!

Students were able to build magic bridges, instant houses, and “draw” in luscious Minecraft 3D with turtles! And if you know me, you know I’m a big turtle fan.

Not only that, but the authors were incredibly helpful in answering questions that I posted on their forum. So yeah, you can say I’m a fan. Can’t wait to fine tune it for next year!

I asked the students how they liked it compared to the other approaches, and someone said, “It’s about 4000 times better!” Good enough for me!